


you know what they say - you're only human

by kuraku



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, M/M, Mild Gore, Religious Conflict
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 10:54:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21014609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuraku/pseuds/kuraku
Summary: kyungsoo, after a harrowing accident, finds himself in the hands of something inhuman.【 #MONSTERFEST 2019 → L11 】





	you know what they say - you're only human

Kyungsoo had a friend who used to tell him all the time: “No one truly believes in God until they’re faced with Death, and by then it’s too late.”

Funnily, he can’t remember that friend’s name, now.

It feels like there’s a leak, in the back of his head—a hole that’s been covered with spackle and paint and made new again, a hole that unsuspecting owners would find upon drilling in a spice rack or hanging a few frames, one that would give into the wall and splinter the edges. He must have knocked it loose when his head hit the cement, earlier; he must have gently cut the haphazard home repair open, and now all of his memories are draining out, running in greedy lines towards the grates of the sewer and down into the murky waters. 

He’ll never be able to gather them back up again—he doesn’t have a towel, or a bucket, or anything at all. He doesn’t have feeling in his legs anymore, like they’re separate from his body, even though he knows they drag against the asphalt, and twist at angles they’re not meant to, when his arms bend and he tries to pull himself out of the street and up over the curb onto the sidewalk. He can’t see—one of his eyes is closed, and it feels permanent, like the darkness there is something that will never be illuminated by the simple lift of his lid again.

Around him, there’s a wailing, and at first he thinks it must be a child, a baby that’s lost its mother or its candy or its rattle toy, but when he strains to listen, he correctly identifies it as a car horn, blaring and unfailing. Someone must have fallen asleep against it, or there’s some sort of malfunction; Kyungsoo’s head won’t turn, so he can’t look to see what’s caused all the sound. Plumes of smoke rise behind him, and he can taste something burnt on his tongue. A soft, near-silent metal whirring somewhere in the distance must be his bicycle; it makes that sound when he hits a rock or a bump in the road—the sound when he goes toppling from the seat and the bicycle follows him, comically upturning as if to make up for the embarrassment of his fall. 

He still can’t remember that friend’s name—and there his memories go, splashing down against the hard curb of the sidewalk when his hands grip at the edge of it—but he can remember riding home from work, his earbuds in, the music at an obnoxious volume. He can remember a screeching halt, the crunch of metal, a lamp post and broken glass. 

He rolls onto his back once he’s on the sidewalk. It’s wet beneath his head, like the soft dew of a glossy morning, the way grass becomes soaked and soaked with it as if caught in a sudden rainstorm. Kyungsoo realizes his glasses are broken, and the shapes from his good eye look blurry and exaggerated, as if he’s been caught coloring outside of the lines, transforming objects and people into outrageous, hideous things, large and smeared all over.

Someone reaches for his hand. He feels it, and then he doesn’t—like when a baby squeezes all of its fingers around an adult’s thumb.

“Am I going to die?” Kyungsoo says out loud, but the words are like the shapes he sees above him; it sounds like he’s underwater.

Colder, and colder, his body seems to sink into the cement. Perhaps he’s there to fill in the holes and the scratches, there to hide them from the next person walking by. His gaze searches for some kind of reassurance, some kind of focus, but there’s nothing he can hear, nothing that makes it through the panic. Slowly, he feels consumed by it, like it’s climbing through his arms and legs and making them stiff and immovable. 

There, with strangers crowded around him—Kyungsoo has never felt so terrifyingly alone.

“Are you awake?” says a soft, familiar voice.

Both of Kyungsoo’s eyes open.

The room is slow to swing into focus, and when he lifts up a hand to push his glasses up his nose, they aren’t there. Still, there’s a sharpness to his vision that feels both surprising and unsurprising, at once, like his body knows and recognizes the reason even if his mind can’t come up with a clue. Above him there’s a ceiling, but it’s covered with thick chains that loop and hang and swing into the crown molding; there are matching chandeliers, but neither is adorned with candles. Everything about the room has a strange, blueish hue to it, like the walls are neither dark enough to be black nor light enough to be mistaken for anything else. Kyungsoo sits up, slowly.

A door at the end of the room is left open just enough for there to be light to see by—it’s made of huge, rounded wood, the kind of door that might be in the dungeon of a fantasy novel or some old Victorian castle. Kyungsoo squints at it for a moment before he pushes himself up onto his feet. Though unsteady, his arms and legs seem to work just fine. He can’t remember why he thought they wouldn’t.

There’s nowhere else to try for, no windows or hallways. There’s only the door, and Kyungsoo takes a few steps toward it. He’s never been a particularly brave person: but he’s never been much for the hypersensitivity of fear, either. What else is there to do? He can go beyond the mystery door, or stay on the floor. Only one of those choices means moving forward—so he reaches for the handle.

“I wouldn’t do that,” says that soft, familiar voice.

Kyungsoo’s brows knit together, and one of his hands closes into a fist.

When he turns around, ready to go knuckles flying—he sees a young man standing there, seemingly undisturbed by anything around him. Rather, it almost appears that he’s _bored_: it’s as though he’s been in this room so many times that the details have lost all of their appeal. But where had he appeared from? Kyungsoo had been utterly alone when he’d woken up—something that had sparked some kind of distant fear in his chest. The man is dressed almost regally, in a black turtleneck sweater that’s rolled up so close to his chin, Kyungsoo can hardly see the pale, milky skin of his neck, and a black blazer that has sleeves so long his hands barely make it out from the bottom.

His voice is familiar in that way that memories have of tricking their keepers into thinking that something is known when it is not. His face is even more familiar—Kyungsoo has the sudden feeling that he’s touched it before, that he knows the way the man’s jawline goes sharp to his neck and the way he might cringe from being touched there. He has this strange inkling of knowing what it’s like to see him smile, to see him frown, to see him cry.

The man comes closer, and both of Kyungsoo’s hands are tight balls at his side, like he’s ready to lash out if necessary. But the familiar stranger doesn’t touch him, and Kyungsoo moves aside. He reaches for the door instead, twisting the handle until it draws open and a rush of cold air comes inside, so startling that Kyungsoo’s lips press together against a gasp.

“It would burn your skin,” the man says amicably, and gestures Kyungsoo further inside. As he walks past the door, he narrows his eyes at the handle: up close, he can see the way the metal flashes, like it’s so achingly cold that even something as stiff and unyielding as iron could bend pitifully to its will. He decides he won’t touch anything.

“Where am I?” he demands, as soon as he’s cleared the threshold. The man follows after him, and the door closes behind them both with an echo of sound, the kind that church bells make when they ring from far away. He smiles, and Kyungsoo feels something strange in his chest, like the sight of it makes his heart twist in discomfort. He doesn’t know why.

Before the both of them is a land that’s drenched in purples and blues, dark blacks and grays hiding in the dips of mountainous caverns and cliffs. There’s a long river that’s probably a good five minute walk from where they stand, but the water is such a strange, vibrant teal that Kyungsoo doesn’t think it’s a good idea to step in it. The ground beneath them is rocky, tiny little pebbles that beg to make movement uneven and arduous, but under those pebbles is solid brown dirt, hard enough that Kyungsoo doesn’t worry about falling into holes or unseen curves. There’s no blue sky, no clouds—just a strange, purple horizon, and yet without moon or sun there’s enough light to the land to be able to navigate relatively well. 

And it’s cold, so cold that his breath comes out in puffs of smoke before him, disappearing into the murky sky. 

“You don’t recognize it?” the man asks, and it sounds like his voice is curious—like he’s begging Kyungsoo to have some kind of recognition. He doesn’t.

“Should I?” Kyungsoo says in irritation, and his arms fall at his sides, loose and unhelpful. He wants to cross them against his chest to keep warm, but he’s not sure it will help. The cold feels bone deep, and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to shake it. The man smiles at him again, but it’s fainter this time, drawn in the lightest pencil as if to be easily wiped away. Still, Kyungsoo finds himself gaping at him in surprise when he starts to shrug out of his blazer, drawing his arms out of the sleeves and holding it out to him in offer.

Kyungsoo doesn’t want to take it at first—he doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him if he does. But he knows that if he stays like this, in a thin sweatshirt and a pair of ripped up jeans, he won’t last very long. He takes the blazer. It’s blooming with warmth.

“You can see that light, way out at the top over there,” the man says, as Kyungsoo slides his arms into the sleeves and wraps the blazer up around him—it’s slightly too big, and hangs a little low against his hips and thighs. “That’s where we’re heading. I’ll be taking you there.”

Kyungsoo wants to ask why, and a thousand other questions, but the man starts moving and Kyungsoo, for whatever reason, is drawn to following him. The terrain is annoyingly uneven, and nearly painful beneath his sneaker soles, but the man’s wearing sharp-toed boots that seem to make it easy for him to carry on. Kyungsoo’s gaze flickers up to look at him for a moment, before he looks back to the ground before him so as not to fall.

“Something must have happened to me,” Kyungsoo reasons out loud. The man glances at him, and there’s another smile—he seems to be full of them, but they seem to get more and more painful for him to wear. 

“Something did happen to you,” the man says, his voice soft and gentle. “And that’s why we’re making this journey together.”

_And what kind of journey is it?_ Kyungsoo wonders, but doesn’t ask. The man next to him seems like he’s burdened with a thousand words that he doesn’t quite want to say, or can’t reason out a way to safely articulate. It’s a feeling that Kyungsoo thinks he knows well—he’s never been good at talking, never sounded particularly smart or well-read. He thinks that maybe being quiet will serve in his favor: it may encourage the man to keep talking, and Kyungsoo’s hands slide down into the pockets of the blazer and find that they’re warm, too. One of them has something crinkly in it; his fingertips brush against it, but he doesn’t draw it out for fear of learning what it is.

“There are many people who come this way, and it’s my job to lead them,” the man continues after a moment, like he’s deemed it safe to say. “I take them to where they will learn their fate. Today, there’s only you, because...” Here he falters. “...because you’re special, and it’s a special kind of day.”

Kyungsoo’s never thought of himself as special. On the contrary, he’s been one of the most unremarkable humans in history.

“I’m not really alive,” Kyungsoo decides to say, cautiously. The man looks pained, but gives a faint nod. When he’s sheepish, like this, his cheek dips into a slash of a dimple, and Kyungsoo finds it endearing in a way, almost cute. He doesn’t seem to enjoy the work that he does here—and Kyungsoo can understand why. What kind of conversations must he have, every day, over and over again? The same kinds of questions, the begging, the disbelief?

“So this is Hell.” Kyungsoo’s voice strains, and he wets his lips. It’s so cold that the air that touches them seems to burn. The man laughs, and it sounds like some of the tension drains out of him with it.

“No, this isn’t Hell,” he says, amused. “Close to it, but not exactly. This is somewhere in between.”

_Limbo_, Kyungsoo’s heard of it. It’s been written in books, at least, though he’s not sure he ever really believed in such a thing. And what does that make his companion here, next to him? If Kyungsoo’s not really alive, then this man beside him is not really human. Kyungsoo squints at him—and nearly trips over a particularly large pebble. The man reaches out sharply, tugging at his arm to keep him on balance. The place where they touch feels particularly hot, like there’s a whole palm mark etched into the fabric, into his skin, now, where his hand wrapped around him.

“What happens when we reach the light over there?” The place in the distance is coming closer to them the more that they walk. The man keeps a slow pace, making it easy for Kyungsoo to keep up with him despite the pain in the soles of his feet. His sneakers are old and should have been thrown out a week ago—he regrets having worn them again. 

“A decision is made on, where you belong now. The good place, or the....” The man’s voice trails off, like he doesn’t want to say. “... the other one.”

Kyungsoo’s irritation gets the better of him. “And what decides that?”

The man looks thoughtful for a moment. In just the turtleneck, Kyungsoo can see the shape of his body, the way his chest dips into a narrow waist, small hips, long legs. Some part of him wants to reach out and put his arms around him—he shivers at the thought. What kind of idiot is he? If he touches this man, this creature, then surely something worse will befall him. He has the oddest sense of foreboding, like it comes from bone deep, as though his body knows and senses something that he simply cannot fathom yet.

Beneath the weight of the blazer, his back itches; it feels like a persistent pain, and he tries to reach up a hand behind him to scratch at it. Maybe it’s from whatever happened to him—maybe his body still carries the wounds from his life. When his gaze lifts again, the man is watching him, but his lips are pressed together, and his eyes have this strange, watery quality to them that makes Kyungsoo think he wants to cry. And if he did, what might happen? Would the tears freeze on his face, or would they make icy trails down the skin, like frostbite on a window pane?

“There are rules,” he says, and he sounds almost mournful. Kyungsoo finds that his irritation is growing into something of a beast, hairy and foaming and hard to control. His fingers etch frantically across his back, but he can’t seem to scratch where the incessant itching starts, and especially not through the double material of the garments on his back. He gives up.

“Like whether you believe in God, or not. Whether you’ve followed the path of your life or tried to alter it.” The man continues talking, though his steps seem smaller, now. It’s almost as though he’s reluctant to reach that light in the distance—it’s almost as though he doesn’t want to bring Kyungsoo there. “Whether you’ve loved someone you weren’t supposed to.”

It’s the kind of thing that’s always bothered him, about religion: it’s why he’s never really believed in it in the first place. One misstep and a person would be damned. Their entire life had to be devoted to a path that even they weren’t certain of, to be rewarded after their death—another unknown—and to maybe realize that they’d wasted everything, every chance or risk they hadn’t taken. He hated that sort of thing.

“Did I break the rules?” Kyungsoo says smartly, though he can’t possibly think of what he could have possibly done.

It makes the man stop moving. He stands there, his back a long, black line against the purples of the sky and the dirt of the ground and Kyungsoo’s head starts to pound, sudden and thick, like he’s crammed tubes of cotton through his ears, stuffed his brain with them, pushed and pushed until there’s no more space. It’s funny, but he has this feeling that he’s seen this before—that he’s wrapped his arms around that waist, that he’s pulled his hands up his chest and over the front of his sweater, that he’s sought out the skin underneath. He has split-second visions, distorted and troubled, of touching this man beneath the low waist of his trousers, of kissing his skin and hearing his soft pleading, his gasps of wanton pleasure. Kyungsoo would blush if it wasn’t so freezing.

“Were you human too?” Kyungsoo demands softly. Both of his hands are pressed up against his temples, like he can squash his head between his palms and squeeze out all of the pressure there. Surprisingly, the man laughs.

“No,” he answers, and continues walking. Kyungsoo trails behind him, carefully trying to walk in his footprints, though he finds they disappear quickly into the dirt and pebbles like they melt and evaporate away.

“Then—”

“You have to stop this,” the man says, but it’s suddenly sharp and commanding. Kyungsoo can see the way his shoulders line up and tense like he’s gearing up to whirl around at him, and he has a sudden irrational fear that perhaps the man’s eyes will burst into flames or that he’ll reveal himself to be the Devil because, after all, doesn’t the Devil always lie?

“You have to stop this,” he says again, but it sounds like desperate pleading. It makes Kyungsoo’s chest ache. Again, his back flares up, itchy and uncomfortable, and part of him wants to cry in frustration. He doesn’t understand what’s happening to his body here, just that they get closer and closer to the light and he feels more and more uneasy, like he doesn’t belong there, like there’s something there he doesn’t want to see.

He remembers something: a fraction of a memory, split into glass. He remembers a long purple sky and soft hands and breakfast in bed. He remembers a fullness in his chest that he doesn’t have now. He remembers—he remembers feathers and tears and his voice, begging in the same way. _You have to stop this_, he had said. _Please do not do this to me._

“Yixing,” comes blurting out of Kyungsoo’s lips before he can stop it. The man’s heels crunch into the gravel.

“No,” Yixing says, and turns, but his eyes are not brimstone fire, nor are they flared with anger. There’s fear there, and regret, and a thousand other things that seem to filter so quickly he can’t recognize them all. He has this feeling that knowing the man’s name is dangerous—like it’s something he’d been gifted, some way for him to trust him, and that he’s said his name a thousand times, in a thousand different ways. He’s yelled it, he’s whispered it, he’s even crooned it in ecstasy. Yixing’s hands find his shoulders, and he revels in how normal it feels, and how bizarre that is. But Yixing shakes him, firm and slight.

“If you remember anything, you have to pretend you don’t,” Yixing urges, and even this, yes, this is familiar too: Kyungsoo remembers him saying the same thing before, in various degrees of distress. He remembers standing here in summer clothes: loose khakis and a short-sleeved shirt. He remembers having so many questions, and the answers flooding back, slowly but surely. He remembers a thousand different deaths—he remembers seeing this sky, over and over again. But he still doesn’t know why.

When Yixing takes up his hand, Kyungsoo finds that the pain in his back is nearly unbearable, and somehow he knows that Yixing knows it, too. And when they start to ascend the steps, bathed in swatches of light from above, he knows that this is wrong, that something is very wrong, that he’s not supposed to be there.

It’s an odd sight, at the top, where the light seems to spill out from a pair of barely open doors, like it’s meant to be a temptation, a surefire way to get anyone to agree to _anything_ in order to move past it. Yixing—he doesn’t know why he suddenly feels so comfortable calling him this, as there’s been no confirmation it’s really his name—seems troubled by it, his eyes squinting into the shadows instead. Kyungsoo finds that his hand in his is a comfort, and he gives it a faint squeeze, though whether it’s in reassurance or in desperate desire of reassurance, he isn’t sure. He finds that there’s no one else there, but them—so what is he supposed to do?

There’s a voice in his head, one that’s not his own, and this whole ordeal has been so strange and troublesome that he doesn’t even question it.

_What lesson have you learned, child?_ the voice asks him. It sounds bemused.

“Nothing,” Kyungsoo says out loud, plainly. Yixing’s palm feels oddly clammy.

_If you wish admittance to the place of Light, you must repent._

“For living a life I wanted to live?” Kyungsoo can tell his voice is starting to grate with irritation. “I don’t want to go somewhere for following rules that I never got to agree to, or make up. I’ve always had my own life to live, and I don’t regret a thing.”

He doesn’t know what he’s saying. It’s like there’s something else inside of him, something more _him_ that answers with distinction and confidence and an overwhelming dash of disgust.

_Very well_, the voice says. _Your curse continues._

“Kyungsoo,” Yixing says, and suddenly there’s sound again, howling around them. It’s like a hurricane siren, or something worse, something that melts and carries around with the wind, a breeze so strong it feels as though it might rip Kyungsoo’s skin to shreds. He winces into it, but Yixing still has his hand.

And perhaps it’s this that is the curse, because in that touch he remembers—he remembers himself as he was, he remembers his boredom and frustration in the lands up above, forced to follow and enforce rules he couldn’t even agree to. He remembers how he and Yixing had spent every day and every night walking these lands together, ferrying souls to their judgments as the representatives of their places. He remembers his own wings: soft, full things, white as snow and soft as baby skin, pulled in tight and taut against his body.

He remembers falling in love with a demon who told him his name bashfully, sweetly, given that it could be one of the only ways for him to be hurt or in danger. A demon who agreed that no person deserves to be sentenced to an eternity in the darkest cold for loving who they wished or doing as they pleased. He remembers touching those black horns and running fingertips down the length of Yixing’s lean body. He remembers wishing they could do more than they did. He remembers feeling safer in Hell than in the crisp confines of his angelic layers.

He remembers the wrath of anger. He remembers Yixing being ripped away from him. He remembers the trial, remembers the judgment of haughty faces looking down at him. He remembers his punishment. He remembers his wings being sawed from his back, the tears pooling and clumping up around his jaw like the hunks of wet flesh tossed to the floor at his side. He remembers blood, so much blood, blood that pooled and stuck to his ankles as he received his final punishment.

“I love you,” Kyungsoo blurts out, like it’s the only thing he can say.

“Next time,” Yixing says, and his eyes are so clear when they look at him, it’s like they see right through him. “...don’t remember me.”

_You will live a human life, and die a human death. _

A cup of coffee in hand, Kyungsoo stares up at the sun. It looks murky and gloomy today, overcast by pollution, and he’s grateful that he’s done for the day. Soon, the light will dip behind the horizon, and everything will be covered by the comforting blanket of night.

_It will not be a kind death—it will be painful, and lonely, and you will doubt everything you’ve ever known. _

He puts his earbuds in, and music floods like water. 

_When you arrive, your lover will escort you here again. If you repent, we will take you back. If you do not, you will return to your human life._

The cup set at his feet, Kyungsoo’s hands work the bike lock open, dumping it into his backpack. He doesn’t hear one of his coworkers wish him a good evening—the song playing is too loud, too insistent, to let him hear much of anything, and he eases up onto his bicycle, downing the last of the coffee before he puts the empty cup in his small basket.

_And you will live it, over and over again, until you learn to obey._

Tires screech in agony.

**Author's Note:**

> it's done, it's done! i had kind of a general idea of where i wanted to take this and gratefully, the story stuck with me. i've always wanted to write a laysoo, so i was super excited to have this opportunity to play around with them....even if i kind of torched their lives.... but i hope that this story has some kind of meaning and can be something enjoyed, even in its sad parts.
> 
> to the prompter, i know i took the angels and demons thing in a really wacky direction, so i hope it's not too much of a disappointment! and to everyone reading, thank you so much for taking the time to hopefully enjoy this one. ♥


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